War Video Games

Abstract

War video games recreate war situations with great realism, favoring the immersion of users and making them participants of the sufferings derived from war. While some of them help the players to understand the war, appealing to the hyper-realistic simulation, others are entertainment artifacts that banalize it. This research seeks to determine the edu-communicative potential of war video games, understood as the ability to drive critical thinking towards war. To do this, we adopt a qualitative methodology based on the study of 10 cases, using the WarVG-A (War video game evaluation) instrument to perform the content analysis, based on six dimensions (cognitive, personal-attitudinal, ethical, logical, argumentative, and expressive-communicative) with different indicators and categories. The results of the analysis indicate that these primary games terrorist tactics and historical adaptation, addressing war from a critical approach. Most evidence ethical dilemmas such as child soldiers, the economics of war (arms sales and conflict perpetuation). Economic and geo-political interests are the engines that drive wars, considered inevitable to defend themselves. The stereotypes that abound are gender and ethnic warmongers represented by photorealistic and cinematographic aesthetics. Only four of the selected playful artifacts can identify tools capable of driving critical thinking, inviting players to reflect on war from a more realistic position and emotionally involving them. However, the explicit representation of violence limits its use in school contexts.